Finance affordable housing in city and suburban communities — As an expert on the Community Reinvestment (CRA), my answers here will focus on using and improving CRA as a tool to promote inclusive communities. Under CRA, federal agencies rate and grade banks based on how many loans, investments and services banks provide in low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities and to LMI borrowers. Banks can boost their grades by financing affordable housing. Community-based organizations should work with banks to focus on affordable housing development in LMI communities undergoing gentrification so that modest income and long-time residents can remain in these communities and help these communities achieve integration. In addition, community-based organizations and local governments should work with banks to finance affordable housing in middle- and upper-income suburban neighborhoods. This not only helps promote integration but provides affordable housing for teachers and other professionals that serve the suburban communities.

Josh Silver is currently a consultant and Senior Fellow at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC). Silver’s thirty-year career at NCRC involved protecting and strengthening the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), fair lending laws, and data disclosure laws to hold financial institutions accountable for fair and responsible lending. Silver was also a development manager for two years at Manna, Inc., a local nonprofit housing developer based in the District of Columbia. Before NCRC and Manna, Silver was a research associate at the Urban Institute in the District of Columbia. He has a master’s in public affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s from Columbia University in New York City. He splits his time in Morris, CT near a lake and in Bethesda, MD with his wife, Kathy Bakich, and cat, Daphne. His daughter, Michelle Silver, is currently pursuing a career in arts management and musical theater in London, United Kingdom.

During my childhood, I had a speech impediment and a learning disability. Other kids picked up on my deficits and bullied me. Bullying hurt. I developed empathy for those suffering through no fault of their own. I went to college in New York City in the 1980s when the city experienced a large increase in homelessness. I quickly realized that people cannot stabilize their lives or look for jobs if they do not have a home address and decent shelter. I became interested in affordable housing and community development. After college, I obtained a graduate degree in public policy and eventually found my way to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC). At NCRC, I became versed in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which requires banks to serve all communities including low- and moderate-income communities. CRA is an important source of financing for affordable housing and community development.

Can you share an interesting or hopeful story where spending time with someone who did not look like you or who was different from you taught you something that has been useful to you?

While I was in graduate school, I had a summer internship in 1990, working for a nonprofit housing development organization called Manna, Inc. in the District of Columbia. Manna also offered housing counseling to DC residents desiring to be first-time homeowners. Most of the counseling clients where African American single mothers who would become first generation as well as first time homeowners and thus have opportunities to build wealth for their families. They were motivated to succeed and move out of a life of struggle and lower income. The housing counselor was a fellow named James Spann who was an African American male. James and I developed a strong friendship. He took me to small Black churches on a few Sundays. As a Jew, I cherished learning about the African American Christian tradition, the liturgy, and music. The services seemed familiar. A prominent theme was that we are all created in the image of God and are sacred. We must strive for multi-racial understanding.

James took me to some of his counseling sessions. For my graduate school thesis, I interviewed several homeowners that were housed by Manna. All of this taught me that hard work, care, and love will make people succeed and feel welcomed. Experiences like this breakthrough stereotypes about the urban poor; they teach us that if society gives people willing to work hard a hand up, they will succeed.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Perseverance — as an advocate, you must never quit. For several years starting in 2000, I helped members of Congress draft legislation requiring banks to disclose data regarding the race and gender of small business owners who applied for loans. The goal was to ensure a fair lending marketplace by ensuring that women- or minority-owned small businesses were not disproportionately denied loans. It took a decade of steady advocacy before this legislative proposal became law in 2010. It is now 2025 and the federal agency responsible for implementing this law has not yet done so. I continue to be involved in efforts to obtain publicly available data on the race and gender of small business lending. This story may sound like a defeat, but we nevertheless have a law requiring the data; it will require continued persistence to finish the job. Meanwhile, by keeping the issue of fair small business lending in the public spotlight, it is possible that the lending marketplace has already become fairer.

Being collaborative, working in coalition with people and organizations — While the saying it takes a village to raise a child may seem worn out, it is true in the field of fair lending and advocacy. The campaign for small business lending data would not succeed if just one person or organization led it. There are strong opponents on the other side that do not want data disclosure, including bank trade associations that complain about the cost of data disclosure and adverse publicity. To combat this, you need several nonprofit organizations, including small business technical assistance providers, who point out the benefits of data disclosure to elected officials and banks themselves. There has been publicly available data on home lending for several years. Nonprofit organizations and advocates conduct data analysis and share results with banks to help them identify missed profitable home lending opportunities. We hope to convince banks that the collaborative process of using data can also help them identify small business lending opportunities. It is the process of building strong coalitions that offer the best chances of success. Coalitions not only present the best case to elected officials but also talk to opponents in efforts to seek equitable compromises. It would be impossible for one person or organization to do this in a country as large as ours.

Flexibility — The need to build coalitions also requires an advocate like me to be flexible. When I have developed policy positions or proposals, I had to engage in conference calls with several people and organizations located across the country. We also shared our draft positions and proposals over email. I had to have an open mind and seek effective compromises that made the positions and proposals stronger. In some cases, I had to explain why we were not adopting a position to someone who was advocating for it. A very important part of this process was making your coalition members feel respected, highly regarded, and included. If you did not do this, the coalition would not fight as hard with you.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Can you share a personal story that highlights the impact of diversity and inclusivity in your life or career?

I spent almost three decades at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) in various roles but mostly as their Vice President of Research and Policy. NCRC is a civil rights and fair lending coalition of 700 community-based organizations across the country ranging from housing counseling organizations, small business technical assistance providers, to neighborhood advocacy organizations. NCRC is also the epitome of diversity composed of local leaders that are people of color, Native Americans, or those that represent poor white communities. During my time at NCRC, I had opportunities to visit areas across the country including the Deep South, the West Coast, and the Midwest. These travels exposed me to the incredible life stories of local heroes. For example, Charles Harris is the African American director of a housing counseling organization in Jackson, Mississippi. Before speaking at his conference, he gave me a tour of Jackson, showing me the former hub of Black enterprise in downtown and the historic house of Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader that was assassinated in the 1960s. Charles told me that Evers taught him in Sunday school. Charlies’ operation runs on a shoestring budget but has made a huge difference in the wealth building and homeownership of the African American community in Jackson. He is in his eighth decade and is still doing this difficult but rewarding work. It is local leaders like this that inspired me while at NCRC to do my best to promote federal fair lending policies and laws that would help their work.

How do you approach and manage the challenges that arise when working towards creating more inclusive communities?

Free market forces if left to themselves will usually result in displacement of people of color and lower income people in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification and demographic change. The challenge is to marshal enough resources for financing affordable housing and low-cost loans for small businesses so they can remain in their neighborhoods.

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is a law requiring banks to serve all communities, including low- and moderate-income ones. Congress passed CRA in 1977 to combat redlining or discrimination against communities of color and modest income neighborhoods. Discrimination against communities of color must be eradicated to promote inclusive communities and to provide residents with opportunities to revitalize and build wealth by acquiring loans for home ownership and small business growth. As neighborhoods undergo demographic change and some gentrify, it is important to ensure that people of color and those with modest incomes can remain. By encouraging banks to finance affordable housing and community development benefiting longer term residents, CRA helps promote inclusive and diverse communities. CRA has had considerable success in increasing lending to those formerly discriminated against. However, for neighborhood change to be managed and diversity to be preserved, locally owned and controlled organizations must be involved in efforts to revitalize communities as detailed in the answer to the next question.

What innovative strategies or initiatives have you implemented or observed that effectively promote the importance of diversity and inclusivity?

The community residents themselves must be involved in efforts to revitalize their communities and promote diversity for neighborhoods to achieve stable integration. Richard and Leah Rothstein describe neighborhood-led efforts to maintain integration and fight unscrupulous real estate agents and predatory lenders that exploited racial fears in order to foment white flight in their book, Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law. For example, in West Mount Airy, a neighborhood in Philadelphia, residents formed organizations including a food co-op and an arts center where whites and African Americans could come together, share experiences, and build an inclusive neighborhood culture.

Another example of neighborhood input occurs when developers seek to build sports stadiums adjacent to existing neighborhoods. Left to its own devices, a free-market development would likely displace residents. Community organizations and cities such as Pittsburgh and Nashville have negotiated community benefit agreements with developers and owners of stadiums. These agreements — and the oversight committees they put into place — ensured that promised benefits such as affordable housing, child-care facilities, living wages, and small-business development occur.

Under the Community Reinvestment Act, banks can receive favorable consideration as serving their communities if they help fund organizations like community-based nonprofit housing developers or land trusts that build housing like cooperatives that are either owned or managed by residents. Using CRA to finance community-led development and housing is imperative to building stable and diverse communities.

In your opinion, what are the key elements that make a community truly inclusive, and how can these be fostered on a larger scale?